印度研发35美元最便宜"笔记本"

印度政府日前推出了一款世界上最便宜的笔记本电脑，售价仅为35美元。据印度人力资源开发部长介绍，这款低成本的触摸屏电脑的主要针对用户为学生，计算机的主板、芯片、处理器、内存和显示器等，所有配件加起来不过35美元左右。另外，这款电脑还内置互联网浏览器、PDF阅读器和视频会议软件，硬件系统具有很强兼容性，能根据用户需求兼容其他配件。目前，该部门正在与各国生产商洽谈大规模生产事宜，预计将于2011年起向高等教育机构广泛推广，同时售价有可能降低至20美元，甚至10美元。

India has come up with the world's cheapest "laptop," a touch-screen computing device that costs $35.

India's Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal this week unveiled the low-cost computing device that is designed for students, saying his department had started talks with global manufacturers to start mass production.

"We have reached a (developmental) stage that today, the motherboard, its chip, the processing, connectivity, all of them cumulatively cost around $35, including memory, display, everything," he told a news conference.

He said the touchscreen gadget was packed with Internet browsers, PDF reader and video conferencing facilities but its hardware was created with sufficient flexibility to incorporate new components according to user requirement.

Sibal said the Linux based computing device was expected to be introduced to higher education institutions from 2011 but the aim was to drop the price further to $20 and ultimately to $10.

The device was developed by research teams at India's premier technological institutes, the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science.

India spends about three percent of its annual budget on school education and has improved its literacy rates to over 64 percent of its 1.2 billion population but studies have shown many students can barely read or write and most state-run schools have inadequate facilities.